Elven Halls Suggestion

[Tiber]

I noticed that the size of Elf has been cut again. I get the reasoning, that it's just more of the same, but it's sort of the lazy solution. Anyway, in the previous major game I played, when it still had four levels, Elf 3 happened to contain the serial vault that I believe was called Hangedman Magical Laboratory. For the uninitiated, this vault places several rooms, each with monsters with a given magic or elemental theme (such as a translocation room with blink frogs, spatial vortexes, and a malign gateway that never expires), and a magic item as loot (such as a book or staff). Not having seen it before, I thought it was placed there intentionally. It felt completely natural in Elf, it provided different challenges than Elf normally does, and provided a decent challenge as to whether to seek the loot.

So, what if it was made a permanent part of Elf, and expanded upon? There's no special level based upon serial vaults (Vaults 8 is close, but it's just the same enemies in slightly different wall layouts). It gives Elf some of the diversity it needs, and it's more interesting than just hanging out outside the end vault and trying to lure them out. Overall, it just makes Elf cooler, and less like a random assortment of halls and rooms with no purpose.

[XuaXua]

I agree; I just had both the mimic room vault and a labyrinth on E2 and that made the trip interesting.

[claws]

Strictly speaking, though not made through a serial vault, the use of shoalhut vaults on Shoals:5 very closely approaches it.

serial_hangedman_research has an purposefully low chance of placement (low depth + 0.5% chance per floor + dropping out of V due to implementation issues for what should be a long while if/when infiniplex's layout lands) due to the extreme gimmicky nature of the vault and its rare monster use, and while Elf could certainly use more variety within the branch I don't think always dumping out a good eighty randomly-themed monsters is the best way of going about it. The very distinct Elf:$ vaults are some of the better vaults in Crawl in general (the higher-tier elves are quite good enemies and choke-points/luring are part of the core of crawl tactics anyway), and always placing a rather busy serial vault would be overshadowing the original point/theme of the elf-focused, mostly-"caster"-enemy branch.

If the majority of "constructs" (golems, elementals) weren't as boring as they currently are I think it'd be good flavour and contrast for elf bands to have some, alongside more placement of the higher-tier elves and more vaults focusing on either theme.

Also, star_item (which is used throughout the vault) just happens to like staves. Some time eventually I might put the appropriate staff per room alongside some more randomized layouts/extra vaults with some uniq_ use for the elements, though, and anybody else could submit more vaults for it (though they should try to follow the guidelines in the .des file).

[Tiber]

Well, the current problem with the branch is that it is too samey; and it's losing its original point by being cut to death. I get your point though that if it always appeared, it would get played out quickly. And while the design of shoals 5 is interesting as a whole, each of the huts are pretty much the same. I was just thinking that most branch ends are either whole level affairs where you know what the level's going to be like once you enter, or a normal level that happens to have a giant vault. Having several strong mini-vaults rather than one big one seems different, and utilizes the entire level, rather than just tacking on a vault to a normal level.

I disagree about the Elf end vault though. That density of powerful monsters in a known location just makes so that you know you're going to do a lot of luring, because rushing in is suicidal. The design of the vault is unimportant, because 75% of the fighting will take place outside of it. This is true of almost all end vaults to an extent, but the Elf vault places so many of them within shouting distance of the entrance, and the single width entrance just makes cloud spells the name of the game.

As for golems, I always saw them as more befitting the perpetually in-limbo dwarf branch.

[KoboldLord]

I'm pretty sure that any thematic vaults you want to make for Elf are going to be welcomed by the devteam. At the moment, Elf doesn't really have a very good set of vaults; because of a quirk of the depth system, you can get some insultingly easy vaults and uniques in there, and there really aren't very many Elf-exclusive vaults. So there's definitely plenty of room for creativity for anybody who wants to write some Elf vaults up.

[twelwe]

how is elf/crypt/tomb depth calculated? I'm pretty certain of how branch depth is determined, but I've never thought of branches within branches.

[KoboldLord]

how is elf/crypt/tomb depth calculated? I'm pretty certain of how branch depth is determined, but I've never thought of branches within branches.

Same way you'd expect. Elf 1 has a depth one greater than the level of Orc its entry stairwell was found on, and Orc 1 has a depth one greater than the level of Dungeon its entry stairwell was found on. If you want to bar a vault from spawning in Elf, you tag it with !Elf, and if you want it to specifically spawn in Elf regardless of depth there's a tag for that too. In the case of the shallowest possible Orc entry and the shallowest possible Elf entry, you can get the hilarious depth of 10 for Elf 1. The inhabitants are still roughly the same, since Elf has its own monster set rather than using Dungeon's, but you can still get adorably non-threatening uniques like Erica and Harold who really, really have no business being in such a dangerous branch.

[njvack]

Slime 17

Huh. Does this have any meaning? Slime has its own monster set, exactly two uniques (can anyone other than TRJ and Dissolution spawn there?) and no loot... does depth have any other effect?

[varsovie]

Temple 5

Why not 0, since no monster are supposed to generate there?

[Deimos]

Why not 5?